Ridiculous
by Glaivester
Summary: Different character's thoughts during the episode "Ridicule." Chapter 7: Amelia Chase explains.
1. Olivia

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Ridiculous

Disclaimer: It all belongs to... whoever owns Law and Order: SVU.

Summary: Different characters' thoughts during the episode "Ridicule." 

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Chapter 1: Olivia

Takes place right after she and Stabler meet Pete Smith. Spoilers for "Inheritance."

Wow. This is different.

I have seen rape cases before where the victim is male, but never where the alleged attackers were female.

Elliot was rather insensitive. I suppose he deals with enough serious cases that he doesn't want to waste his time with people whom he thinks are making false claims. Granted, too, that this is one doozy of a claim. I also suppose he still feels guilty about that guy who was killed in prison after being falsely accused. Nonetheless, I can't help but be angry at him. He was outright dismissive of a young man who was obviously in pain.

Of course, I don't want to believe it myself. Just like that case with the rapes in Chinatown a few weeks back. I didn't want to believe the "genetic" defense, because if having a parent who was a rapist made one violent, what did that say about me? Could I have inherited my father's violence? Now, if there are women who are actually psychologically capable of violent rape, then - could I be one? Could I be a potential rapist? But for the grace of God, would Sydney Green have been me?

But then again, by helping Mr. Smith, don't I prove that I'm not like my father? That I'm not like Sydney Green?

Of course, there is something refreshing about this case. I hate to say it, but in some ways, finally getting a case where an adult male is sexually victimized by females may have some positive consequences. help to de-politicize rape and to get more people interested in preventing it. I mean, so often now, rape is seen in the context of a battle-between-the-sexes that it divides men and women. And of course, turning it into such a sexually divisive issue only harms the victims and helps the perps. No one thinks about the violence against the victim, just about a power struggle between men and women. However unusual this case may be, at least it would help people to see rape as an issue of violence, not as an issue to use as a political tool.

But none of that matters. What matters is that someone is in pain, and claims they were violated, and we owe it to them and to the city of New York and to the state of New York to find out what happened, and if he was raped, to bring the perpetrators to justice. At the very least, he needs to know that someone takes him seriously, that someone cares, and that someone is willing to follow up on his complaint. If this were my mother, I'd want it taken seriously.

So I am taking the case to the Captain and to Cabot. And if they act like Elliot, I will bully them, shame them, do everything in my power to make certain that they take this case seriously.


	2. Elliot

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Ridiculous

Disclaimer: It all belongs to... whoever owns Law and Order: SVU.

Summary: Different characters' thoughts during the episode "Ridicule." 

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Chapter 2: Elliot

Takes place during the trial, immediately after Peter announces that Sydney Green was coming forward.

Oh my God. What have I done.

Oh, no, no, no, no, no.

I've always been a judgmental guy. Dealing with rapists and child molesters and whatnot, you get to be. either that, or else you lose all feeling.

But I always tried to judge the perps. Not the victims.

But it was impossible. How can a woman rape a man? I mean, I could buy it if she used Rohypnol, or if she had sex with him when he was drunk, or passed out. I mean, I doubt most guys would se themselves as being raped, but if they did, I could see their argument. Or even if the woman - women in this case, used a gun. I don't know if I would believe they did, but I could believe that it is possible.

But the idea that women physically subdued a man? That they didn't use the threat of violence, but actual force itself?

Suddenly, though, it's the only explanation that makes any sense. I knew that there had to be foul play in Sydney Green's death, and if she was about to identify two rapists - fellow rapists, then that would explain why Adler and Chase decided to murder her. Certainly if there wasn't anything going on, there would have been no need...

And now, now I have mocked, sneered at, and tried to discredit the victim at every turn. I've made him feel like dirt. God... I'm never going to be able to apologize enough.

I suppose that after the death of Russell Ramsey because of a false accusation by Siobhan Miller... well, I suppose that I have been very wary of frivolous cases. I guess I am going to have to try to be more sensitive... it's so difficult, doing this day in and day out, not to go too far one way or the other.

Strange, isn't it, though? One would think that the guys in this unit would be more concerned than the women, that the women would resent the idea of other women being accused. Yet Munch, Fin, and I all doubted the story, and only Alex and Olivia took it seriously. Well, so did Captain Cragen, now that I think about it. I don't know. Maybe something about being an alcoholic made him more able to sympathize with pain and suffering and powerlessness.

Well, for now, let's just go to Ms. Green's apartment and see what evidence we can find. If we can put these women away, that'll be a start.


	3. Munch

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Chapter 3: Munch

Takes place a few weeks after the episode. Spoilers for "Taken."

Wow. That's weird. Just discovered who Amelia Chase's cell-mate is. 

Siobhan Miller. Imagine that. Strange. She falsely accused a man and he got raped and killed in prison. Now, the first bona fide female rapist - more specifically, the first woman convicted of rape 1 - is her cellmate.

I wonder if she, Siobhan, I mean, will get the same treatment that Ramsey did. I can't wish it on her, as much as I hate her for lying and for making us unwitting accomplices to manslaughter. It was strange, I saw her the other day while interrogating a prisoner for a case. She looked haggard, scared. When she saw me, her eyes were pleading, desperate. I wasn't certain what had happened, until I noticed that her uniform was unbuttoned, and I could see her bare neck. Chafing marks of some sort.

Then I saw Amelia Chase. The sneer that had always marked her face - well, in my experience, granted, I didn't know her well, only what I saw of her during the case, but she always seemed to sneer - was gone. It was replaced by hatred. She looked at me, and made a silent growl. She then turned to Miss Miller, gave her a look, and she scurried away, terrified.

I haven't seen Pam Adler, but from what I hear, after her plea for the murder of Sydney Green, she went to prison for twenty years. I don't know how she is doing in prison. She is one cold bi- well, she's cold.

I can't imagine what it was like for Peter. Most men would fantasize about women forcing themselves on them. But when you see these two, and then think about what Sydney was probably like - it sends a shiver down your spine. Mses. Chase and Adler - they weren't women, they were demons. Amelia Chase, with her unbridled hatred for all men, Pam Adler, with her complete lack of empathy, her inability to actually emote, and Sydney, well, I never knew her, but for some reason I have this image of a junky, of someone whose soul is hidden beneath layers of chemical filth... eyuggg.

It wouldn't be like having a horny supermodel begging you, it would be like... like being tormented by the Furies. Trapped with demons from whom you couldn't escape.

Alex has, of course, been on a bit of a high since this case. Attorneys always enjoy winning difficult cases - well, in her case she didn't completely win, Chase confessed and Pamela got off on the rape charge. But, the fact that Pam Adler killed Sydney Green does sort of vindicate Alex anyway. It proves that she did rape Peter, she just got off. There's also a sense that - that well, that maybe this case will help more men to see rape as an issue of violence, not just as an issue to use against them. So many men see the SVU as a unit which is trying to put men away and trying to help women at their expense. There's always been a little divide, lots of men who see rape as simply a charge a woman can make to get them. Maybe this will help a few people to see it as violence, not as a weapon in the struggle between the sexes.

Is that how Adler and Chase saw it? I never saw Adler as particularly anti-male. She just seemed to ooze contempt for everyone. Chase, on the other hand, the first time we talked with her, she mentioned the fact that she loved to show up men. I talked to her once or twice after that, and each time she always made some comment about how dumb all the men at SVU were, how stupid all the men she worked with were.

I hear they don't know how to handle her. They put her in group counseling, but she's the only woman there. Adler refused such counseling, and as she wasn't convicted of rape, they can't force her. I'd love to be a fly on that wall... what the hell would she be saying?

Although I didn't act like I believed it, a part of me knew form the start. They had that demeanor about them. The demeanor of a predator. Boy, and I never thought I'd see someone who made me miss my ex-wives.


	4. Fin

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Chapter 4: Fin

Takes place a few days after the episode. 

Well, I got the news today. Pam Adler plea-bargained down to twenty years.

I guess I should feel sorry for the poor boy. Or I should be glad that some form of justice was meted out to each of his attackers.

But really, I'm just glad to have Pam Adler behind bars. That bitchy attorney had the nerve to accuse me of police brutality against some drugged-up gang-banger who should have been shot to death soon as he harmed that officer.

Heh. Revenge is sweet. 

I don't know, having grown up in a tough environment, if I would have taken something like what happened to Pete that seriously. That is, if it had happened before I was a cop. Some things people just have to learn to live with, you know? So they violated you? Join the club. No sympathy here. But now, it's my job, and I even sort of feel sorry for the guy.

Soft. Maybe I've gotten soft. Maybe everyone has, living in this modern world.

Oh, well. Pam Adler can go to hell. I can't say that I'm sorry to her lily-white rear-end in prison. She and all of the perps she got off can rot, for all I care.

I hear she wants to try to start up some sort of legal association in prison. Once a lawyer, always a lawyer, I suppose.

I wish I had more to say, but I don't.


	5. Cragen

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Chapter 5: Cragen

Takes place right after Olivia brings the rape case to Cragen (Not seen but alluded to in episode).

Why, oh why, can't we ever have a normal day around here?

It's hard enough having to deal with rapes and murders and child molestation every day.

But why, oh why can't we ever get a straightforward case?

I swear, if we were to arrest someone for littering, we would find out that the bubblegum wrapper contained a clue to some heretofore unsolved murder back in 1979 or something. After, of course, it led to a person who was raped, then wasn't raped, but the person she accused may have raped someone else, who in turn was actually the rapist.

Or something. Just once, I'd like to find a crime, then find out that the person who looked guilty was guilty, and that they weren't part of something bigger.

But no, every case leads us on five or six twists and turns before we solve it.

Okay, I am exaggerating. But here at SVU, we always seem to get stuck with the cases that lead to a Byzantine labyrinth of leads, counter-leads, and false suspects.

So now we find that our murder victim was an accused rapist. Nothing unusual about that. Except that the victim is a woman. So, do I follow the lead of the other cops and dismiss it, or do I try to follow up on the case and try to help this young man?

I heard about this case from some uniforms a while back. They were laughing about it, and mentioned that they had had to meet the accused and explain the charges to her. I had assumed at the time that they had resolved the case and didn't bother to check up on it, although it would fall under the purview of this department.

I suppose w should do our own investigation. I don't want to waste a whole lot of time on a wild goose chase, but if there's one thing that I have learned in this job, it's that non-SVU cops are not always as thorough or as sensitive of people who accuse others of sex crimes. They may have had reason to be annoyed at the kid, or they may have just been biased jerks. It wouldn't hurt to check it out.

I'll call in Alex and see what she thinks. If we can find a suspect, will she pursue the case? If so, then we will begin the investigation immediately.


	6. Alex

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Chapter 6: Alex

Takes place just after the episode.

Well, I am feeling very satisfied today. I managed to get one of the suspects to confess, the other to plead to murder if not the rape.

I also finally managed to find a therapy group that would take Pete and that he would agree to go to. Most rape therapist groups are either for women, or the few for men are for men who've been homosexually raped. The former wouldn't take him even if he wanted to join, the latter he didn't want to join.

Apparently there is one group that deals with men who are abused by women, but most of the guys in the group - hell, everyone but Peter - were abused as children, not as adults. Still, there doesn't appear to be any innate conflict that would prevent this group from working.

Well, I got my name in the papers and in the law history books, of course. Not that that was why I did this. But it did happen, it _had_ to happen. When you set a precedent, it gets noticed.

A few people have commented to me about this. Some of them think that I'm the antichrist. That I should be strung up as a traitor to women. Others say that I am a hero who proved that "women do it too!"

Of course, Olivia explained to me what the greatest effect of this trial will be - that it will help people to think of rape as an issue of aggressors and victims, not as male vs. female. Maybe people will become more sympathetic to victims if they don't see rape charges as part of a bigger battle between men and women.

Chase will get counseling. I wonder what her life was like. How it happened. How she turned into a cold-blooded predator like that.

She and Adler are different, I can tell. With Chase, it's a gender thing. She hates men. She can be friendly if she needs them in business, but she definitely looks down on all of them. With Adler, well I think that she just hates the whole world. Or at least those whom she sees as inferior. I did a little checking and her father apparently had at one time been accused of rape. It was back in the 80s. He was a lawyer, just like her. He managed to get off, and to portray the accuser as a cheap slut who was looking to get even with him for firing her from her job as secretary at his office.

From what I know of her, Adler always admired her father. Modeled herself after him. Maybe too much, I suppose.

Well, it's time to look at my next case, I suppose.


	7. Amelia Chase

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Chapter 7: Amelia Chase

Takes place a while after the episode.

Why, they ask.

Why, asks my therapist. Why, ask the pigs who I do therapy with. Why, ask the reporters, the psychiatrists and psychologists, the would-be authors who want to write my life story.

Well, why not? It's not like no one's done it to me.

My father beat me, and mom let him. He abused her as well, and she always let him walk all over her. Then she divorced him when he "had an affair," i.e. raped, another women. Oh, he was only allowed to rape _her_, no one else. He could beat her black and blue, as long as she was the one getting the attention. My first stepfather liked to strangle me. My second stepfather, who Mom married when I was thirteen, molested me. Once I made the mistake of mentioning my first stepfather and then he turned to strangling me while he molested me.

I guess I picked up my strange fixation from him. Well, when I was seventeen, and he was almost too drunk to stand, I finally rebelled, and punched him in the gut, knocking him on his butt. I then put the rope around his neck, choked him two or three times, and then told him that if he ever laid a hand on me again, I would kill him.

So he left me alone. Six months later, he died. Cirrhosis of the liver. He was insured, so I used the insurance to get myself into college. Mom wanted to use it for herself, but she was always weak, and I browbeat her to give it to me. Once stepdad number two became afraid of me, I could do whatever I wanted.

I had a few boyfriends. Unfortunately, I couldn't seem to enjoy them much. So I tried getting a girlfriend. Well, turns out I'm not a lesbian. So did I just not enjoy sex? Well, I found out what it was when I discovered that I missed being strangled. It was the one way to get off. How could I miss being strangled? Well, abuse messes the mind up, I suppose.

So I began my fixation with choking myself.

After that, I discovered how much I liked control. Perhaps it's because I had been controlled all my life until I stood up to stepdad number two. But not just control, as in dominatrix, as in playing games.

I liked _real_ control, as in being able to force the other person to act against their will. Generally, I would always pick the shyest guys to go out with, or pick them out at parties, and hang around with them. I'd come on to them, and if they were interested, I'd maybe hook up with them and then usually dump them. If they weren't interested, I'd get them drunk, intimidate them, keep coming on to them, whatever it took to have sex with them. Until it stopped being fun, then I'd move on to someone else.

I could get away with it too, because who would believe that I had forced myself on someone. Or for that matter, that if I did, it was somehow criminal. I was a women. Women don't rape.

Personally, I didn't see it mattered. Most guys are just animals underneath. Rapists if you let them be. Abusers. Sexist misogynists who want to "put you in your place." So I put them in their place first.

I'd go to the Take Back the Night Marches, help out with any programs to deal with rape that my college had. Mainly because I enjoyed the irony. No one ever suspected that I was turning the tables on the men, not just helping my sisters who had already been victimized. Somehow I don't think that most of "my sisters" would have approved. Well, they are wimps anyway.

Once someone got very close to charging me, so I had my friend Pam Adler find some dirt on him and threaten to reveal some information that could put him in jail. She even suggested that I claim him as my attacker. So he dropped.

Sydney Green was a friend, too. She didn't know about parts of my life, but she knew I tended to approach men aggressively.

Well, then she got engaged. At a rehab center. Oh, yeah, she claimed it was on a cruise, but I know she was a junkie. I worked with her, and I saw her popping pills. She left almost dead, and came back engaged and sober. I hated the guy.

The night of the bachelorette party- well, Pam and I decided to show her that she could have a better time with any man, and that she needn't attach herself to one. Pam suggested that we use the male stripper. Said she's paid him so we could pass him around. I agreed, and we got him into the bedroom. then we brought Sydney in. She had fallen off the wagon a few weeks earlier, and was currently pretty wasted.

Pam whispered something something in the stripper's ear, and he said "no thanks, just the money you owe me, please." Angry, she picked up the letter-opener and swung it at him. I don't know if she intended to force him or not at that point, but I immediately saw this as a chance to show another man who's boss, and helped her to force him toward the bed and to restrain him. Sydney was a little too hopped up to think rationally, and followed my lead, and Pam, if she had been playing before, now decided to join in with us in earnest.

Pamela had been taunting the guy when I left. Telling him to shut up and get over it, no one would believe him, he was lucky, he got his money and a bonus, so shut up. I saw her unlock him and tell him to get dressed as she threw some money at him. I adjusted my clothes and walked out to the party, where the other women were playing some sort of stupid "truth or dare" game. A few were playing a drinking game as well.

Then Sydney came out and told everyone else to go home. After they left, Peter Smith ran out of the bedroom as fast as he could and out of the apartment.

As soon as it was just us three, Sydney broke down in front of us. She wanted to tell someone. We convinced her that it wouldn't help, that the stripper would get over it and that it would only make difficulty for her upcoming marriage if she came forward. She said that she couldn't keep it a secret from her fiance, and we nicely suggested that maybe she should dump him, then. But she eventually calmed down and we left, and she did, of course, marry him anyway.

So then Pam Adler gives me a call one night, in a panic, and says that we need to shut Sydney up. We decided to reason with her, but I bring a rope, just in case. One of my special ropes.

Well, Sydney won't listen to reason. she's the only one that can ID us, and she is going to betray us to that little bastard of a stripper, and so we kill her.

Well, long story short, I'm in prison now. And after discovering what my cellmate did, I administer a little retributive justice to her. No one believes her, and she is now totally under my control.

Hey, she lied a man into jail. I don't begrudge her that, per se, but it wasn't for anything but crass money. Being in jail for rape myself, I suddenly have a sympathy for that man that I never had before. In jail on a false charge, and as a result he gets raped and murdered in jail. So I am giving little Miss Miller a little bit of revenge in kind.

Not that I am attracted to women, mind you. But the look of fear on her little face is quite satisfying. Seeing her pay for what she did.

In therapy, I am not making progress, I guess. Not by their measurements. But I am making enormous progress from my own way of measuring.

I insisted on being given group therapy with the men. Finding enough women to make a group was too difficult, and I didn't want individual, and so they decided to let me join the group on a trial basis.

I almost got kicked off the first day, when some of the men ridiculed me, and I suggested that the therapist have them all tied up and give me an hour alone with them. I suppose in a less controlled environment, I would have been scared out of my wits by all of these muscly, brutish guys, any one of which could have beaten me up. But knowing that they weren't allowed to hurt me, I managed to threaten and attempt to intimidate every last one of them.

Some of them respect me. Others hate me. And some are just a little afraid of me. With their strength advantage neutralized, what do they have?

Well, that's my story.


End file.
